“Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.”

“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”

“...it was a misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely.”

“Only a fool can be happy. For happiness consists of two contradictory elements: contentment and pleasure. Enjoy pleasure and you have no contentment; be content and you have no pleasure. For this reason happiness is conceivable only for those who enjoy themselves without thinking that they will always want more and thus be discontented, or for those who are content without thinking that they have no pleasure. Whoever reflects can never be happy, unless he is a fanatic and thus blinded…thus exercising control over his intelligence with his feelings, instead of the other way round”

“Where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others.”

“she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.”